Voyager Ventures closes $275M Fund II for foundational energy, transportation, and AI investments

And our last guest of the lightning round, Sierra Peterson from Voyager Ventures

Energy Time Reream Waiting Room. How are you doing?

Hey guys, delighted to be here. How are you?

We're great.

Great to have you. Uh first time on the show. Would love uh introduction on yourself and the firm and then we can get into the news.

You bet. So I'm Sierra Peterson. I'm one of the two founders at Voyager Ventures. We are an early stage venture capital firm investing in these foundational technologies that power civilization. So this energy, materials production, advanced comput, physical AI. These are the biggest markets in the world and the ones that are foundational to ongoing growth in the long term and competitive advantage in the near term. So I have been working in energy for my entire career. Got my start 21 years ago at the International Energy Agency.

Overnight success.

Exactly. [laughter] long time coming. Uh and I mean that's really the story of our backgrounds. Myself and my co-founder at Oyer Sarah have been working in energy and industrial uh modernization and climate stabilization now for decades and between us we've built five climate tech and energy companies. Uh we've been active in policy making at the International Energy Agency as I mentioned and also in the Obama office of energy and climate change back when we had one. Uh and we built Yeah, exactly. Uh we built companies that um were responsible for financing more than $3 billion worth of distributed energy assets. So, a lot of solar. Um, we've been active in the research programs at Harvard and MIT, advancing everything from energy market research, which was my graduate focus, and Sarah's at MIT in industrial biotech. Uh, and we've been investing now for 10 years plus. Actually got started as an angel investor in 2015 in energy tech. Those companies did well. And so, we teamed up to launch Voyager in 2021 and raised a hund00 million debut fund. U, we've recently John's going for the gong.

How much did you raise recently?

Hey, no, that's not the big the the big news announced at 275 on two. So,

we were waiting for that. Uh, very cool. I want to talk about energy because I feel like your your timing here is great. I feel like people in uh are spending way more, you know, uh it's gone mainstream uh both at the national level and politics.

Just in [clears throat] the last few weeks, we've had uh Scott Nolan on to talk about uh you know nuclear uh uh fuel production and then a separate company that turns that actually into fuel pellet, tricofuel and like there's a there's a company in every part of the stack. uh are there any particular subcategories that you're tracking that you're particularly interested in? And then I want to talk about the financing of all this as well, but uh what what what do you think is the most like breakout success in energy these days?

Oh yeah. I mean we're energy maximalists. I have been working in energy for my entire career. Yeah. And when I and when you think about what's truly foundational to powering civilization, it's energy. That is the foundation of all of it. And so, you know, we it's actually a really exciting time to be investing given advances particularly in electrification. I mean, we're seeing the cost of solar drop so fast. You have to look at it at a log scale. It's amazing. And what that means in terms of, you know, the distribution of energy at a worldwide scale is incredible. H and for creating, you know, a truly global and resilient energy system. Um that's you know enables near-term stability for users of electricity and long-term prosperity at a global scale. That's like that's this is a technology that will power the next era of progress and beyond. Um so electricity massive advances on edification massive right now.

Are you optimistic about American solar? It feels like the in terms of solar panel construction and manufacturing China is doing so well that it's been really hard to get a foothold. We we we've talked to some teams that have you know taken Chinese-built assets and

T1 energy

T1 energy is interesting but uh I haven't seen as much as much excitement from the startup world around really scaling solar but then you have you know huge voices like Elon is a solar maxi there's lots of people that are very uh very you know uh just uh beating the drum on like the fundamental physics of the sun is so much energy we're going captured at some point. So, it feels inevitable, but it doesn't feel like there's a boom or narrative being driven. But what are you seeing?

Oh, it's totally inevitable. You can't argue with the numbers. I mean, 90% of installed energy generation for the last year that we have record is 2024 is renewables.

That [clears throat] is at a global scale. That is certainly true in the United States as well. I think it's just under 90%. And [clears throat] I mean, that's regardless of political whim. That's regardless uh of um you know overall organizing policy approach. Um that's just simply because solar is better that it's cheaper, it's better performing. It you know it enables a true distribution of electricity like we've never seen before and coupled with advances in batteries. That's the unlock. You can you really create a transactive synergy system which we've never seen before and really will be fundamental to power and growth for decades ahead. So huge yeah huge believer in solar's potential now um and you know in combination with electrification both of [clears throat] energy generation uh also um in end use applications I mean electricity now is the you know the most frequent way in which anybody around the world accesses power that's exciting it means that power is programmable um and it enables a new era of machines to be made which is extraordinary in terms of you know extending human capability abilities into ways that we've never had before. Uh when you couple that with automation um and artificial intelligence, like we're just seeing the foundations of so much innovation right now to really one boost systemic stability in a rising vulnerability and uh volatility market. You have fraying trade relationships, geopolitical tensions, physical risks that are intensive given climate change. And when you can control your inputs in terms of electricity, in terms of your means of production, and you can take advantage of advances in advanced manufacturing to create better products, you can really control your own destiny. That's exciting.

Yeah. How are you thinking about uh financing hard tech companies, energy companies, these like capital intensive companies at the earlier stage? It feels like uh more and more founders are going to need to get familiar with venture debt. It's been sort of a cautionary tale from the software startup era. I'll venture debt. That's what will burn you. That's what will really put you in danger uh if you're if you misplan and then you you get over your skis. But how do you think about the role of venture debt or debt instruments or more uh more complicated financing schemes for some of these companies?

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think one of the things that we're quite excited about is the sophistication uh of the financing instruments that are available to early stage startups. I mean, it used to be that you had to burn super high cost of capital venture or private equity on assets and that didn't make sense for anybody. um you know now we're seeing really tailored um and interested um bespoke nondilutive financing um you know all types and I think it's a recognition of the scale of these markets and the durability that they have and you know this um longived um and reliable yield. I think we're also seeing though and this is something that's been um you know a recent development ongoing sovereign interests and recognition in these technologies as being tools of the national interest. You know 44% of our own portfolio um is either in partnership or in active conversations to sign a deal with the US government.

Uh that's extraordinary. I mean, you know, you see Inqel last year, I think, became one of our our second most frequent co-investor. Um, and

it used to be completely unthinkable. It was like you'd never go to the government. They'll never buy anything. Like Palunteer was this weird company that was like off in the dark just doing one deal and they were the only ones and then Anderol sort of did it again and then all of a sudden it was like every company has some sort of deal with the government. really change everything

because when you think about what are the inputs and tools of sovereign advantage of competitive advantage, it's controlling your destiny in terms of energy, controlling your destiny in terms of supply chains for inputs to manufacturing, industrial capacity and then increasingly compute capacity. It's a national asset and all [clears throat] of that hyperscaler stack that all relies on electricity.

Yeah. What about uh like what what are the prospects for making uh bringing the solar supply chain uh to the United States? We have like earlier we mentioned T1 energy which was kind of a weird

setup uh in the way that it was created and and now operated by a new company but uh can we I think one of the reasons that people that that maybe Americans and and uh the tech industry isn't so excited about solar at this moment or at least broadly is that we're not making the panels here. It doesn't feel like uh something that uh is that we really own.

Yeah. I I mean I I think I don't know that we're not excited about solar when you you look at the solar deployment. Well, I'm just saying like the the attention is almost entirely on nuclear

like nuclear

like that now

like I'm just saying from when you when you would like a word but

yeah sure but think about [laughter] I I would just say the number of entrepreneurs that have come on the show this year that are talking about nuclear the the nuclear deals are are uh and and I'm not saying it's like warranted but I'm just saying like nuclear is is certainly uh

well it feels like at least to me and you can give your feedback back on this take, but um it feels like nuclear was uh was potentially economically valuable viable. The the technology worked, but there was a regulatory blocker in place that made it very very difficult to actually just stand up the technology. With solar, there's no that that regulatory blocker doesn't exist. It's more of a market force of China manufactures them really really cheaply and like it's the DJI drone question versus GoPro like where like we just need a ton of people, a ton of manufacturing capacity, a ton of CNC machines. We need like a massive facility and that's more of a capital formation and then are you willing to go up against the Chinese manufacturing engine? That's

so critical. My point is just that energy is critical solar energy

it still feels blocked. pretty big part of it. So I would imagine we want to make as many of these as we can in the US.

So I was curious like

update on the on the effort there. I know you've uh invested in in it and uh curious.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean I think we're seeing a real reexamination of global supply chains uh for critical uh aspects of ongoing sovereign advantage and industrial

competitiveness. uh solar being, you know, one, critical minerals another, uh access to novel battery technologies. Um these are all aspects of an overall industrial policy that's, you know, increasingly favoring uh domestic production and control of energy producing assets and manufacturing inputs. Um I think you know to your earlier point like any technology is going to need to clear the global clearing price uh and the the massive reduction in cost. It's been extraordinary for solar production for panel production. Um it's you can't get much cheaper. [laughter]

There's kind of nowhere to go.

That's exciting. I mean, think about that as an input to other industrial processes. That's I mean, it's truly extraordinary opportunity to have abundant energy uh that doesn't rely on, you know, fossil fuel supply chains that's truly distributed and can be programmable. I mean, you couple it with energy storage, I mean, you just have a whole new paradigm in abundance for electricity.

Be exciting.

Very exciting.

I Yeah. What uh you guys se uh

stage agnostic preede?

Oh, we're early stage early.

Yep. Yeah. So, we raised 275 million. H it's more seed series A series 275 million for uh seed and series A. We went out to market with a 250 target. We were overs subscribed on that. I had a 90% first close. There was a lot of

Yeah. Thanks, guys.

Amazing.

It's been great.

Well, congratulations.

Well, excited. I'm sure I'm sure a bunch of your companies will be on and congrats to the whole team.